Young people

Live updates

The head of a motoring charity has called for the Government to act after a poll found that the majority of Britons support introducing curbs on newly-qualified young drivers.

Professor Stephen Glaister, the director of the RAC Foundation, said: "the issue of young driver safety is one of those matters that must be addressed."

He added: "If there were any other area of public health policy where this level of harm was taking place there would be an outcry, yet as a nation we seem to accept what is happening to many of our young people when they get behind the wheel."

Young drivers are seen as more of a hazard on the roads than the elderly, a new safety survey has found.

The RAC Foundation poll found:

83% regard young drivers being involved in road accidents as a problem

52% regard older drivers in accidents as a problem

71% agreed that politicians should give more attention to road safety

64% of parents say they would ensure their children complied with a graduated licensing system

The poll results showed that a large majority of Britons were in favour of placing curbs on newly-qualified young drivers, such as banning them from the roads late at night or limiting the number of passengers they can carry.

A big majority of people support placing driving restrictions on people aged 24 or under who have passed their test within the last year, according to a new poll.

Some 61 per cent supported a ban on them driving between midnight and 5am, while 66 per cent said they should be subject to limits over how many passengers they could carry, a poll of 2,101 adults carried out for the RAC Foundation found.

More than a quarter of 20 to 30-year-olds live with their parents, a massive increase since the start of the economic downturn, according to the Office for National Statistics.

About 3.3 million of adults aged 20-34 lived with their parents in 2013, an increase of 669,000 since 1996.

The number of young people living with their parents has risen sharply since the start of the economic downturn Credit: Paul Faith/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Nearly twice as many young men live with their parents compared to women - 2.1 million against 1.2 million - who are more likely to form relationships with older partners, move away to university or become a lone parent when a relationship breaks down, said the ONS.

The rise in young adults living with their parents in 2013 occurred despite the number of 20 to 34-year-olds staying roughly the same over the last seven years.

A report complained of an "overly complicated" system of tackling youth unemployment, with 33 different national schemes, covering 13 different age boundaries, costing £15 billion a year.

More than 94,000 people completed hair and beauty courses last year, even though there were only 18,000 new jobs in the sector, while in construction, around 123,000 people were trained for around 275,000 advertised jobs - more than two jobs for every qualified person, said the LGA.